The Ugliest Doll Ever

Meet the ugliest doll ever!

For more than 6 months every time Princess and I go to the craft store, she has picked up this doll and carried it around with her.  Even when Princess first found her, she was ugly.  She had a blue tinged face, wiry hair, and was naked other than her shoes.  She was in a display box with other dolls - pretty dolls - dolls that I felt were much better than this one.  But Princess was drawn to her.  Princess named her Cinderellabella the very first time she saw her.  Over time, sitting in that display box, the doll had lost most of it's hair and one of her sleepy eyes.  Still, Princess would seek her out every time we went in. I  warned her as we entered the store each time that perhaps she would not be there.  Cinderellabella always was.

Yesterday, she finally asked if we could bring her home.  My first instinct was to say "no way." After all, the doll wasn't worth paying for- it was broken, used up, defective.  But I saw the love in my daughter's eyes and couldn't say no.  What I did say was that she would have to ask the price of the doll  and she would have to pay for it herself.  If she truly wanted this ugly doll then she would agree.   She did.

The store owner told her it was a dollar.  My opinion was that it wasn't worth that much.  The owner would never be able to sell this doll in it's current condition to anyone other than my daughter. But my sweet 4 year old agreed and brought Cinderellabella to our home.  

 

  She rushed to show this rag tag doll to her siblings.  When dad arrived home, this was the first thing she told him about.  It now goes everywhere with her.  This unkempt, broken, marred doll has become her prized possession.  I didn't get it... 

Until I did.  This morning God showed me something special about this situation. I am sure you have already seen it.  I'm a little slow sometimes.   I had seen only an ugly doll, while my daughter saw something of great worth.  Much like God sees the worth in each of us.

We are all less than perfect.  We have our own versions of an off color face, an eye that doesn't see. We  are each flawed  in some way. We are less than beautiful, even if only on the inside.  Many may view us as less than desirable, choosing to walk on by, to overlook us in favor of something they deem somehow 'better'.  Jesus, however, sees our true worth, much as my daughter saw worth in this doll. 

 He seeks us out at every opportunity and loves on us.  He values us so much that he paid a price that was much to high just so he could give us a home.  Jesus is proud of us and loves us unconditionally.  While the world may see the ugly doll, Jesus sees each of us as a beautiful treasure.

It's days like this that I wonder if God gives us children so we can teach them, or so they can teach us.  I learn so much about Him through them!

Romans 5:8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is in your midst,  a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness;  he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.


 *Originally posted on Sunflowers at Home

build - The Tower

verses:  Genesis 11:4, Genesis 11:5, Genesis 11:8

image source

If you ever attended Sunday School you probably already know this story, even if you didn't chances are good you have heard it before.  The Tower of Babel, a monument to what man can accomplish on their own, an expression of self-worship.  A big ol' billboard that screams, "We don't need you God!"

Genesis 11:4 tells us that it was built so that man could "make a name" for themselves and so they wouldn't be "scattered over the face of the whole earth".  Hmmm....didn't God instruct for them to do just the opposite?  Genesis 9:1 says that God told Noah and his sons to, "increase in number and fill the earth".

Remember that this is one of the cities built by Nimrod, and this is the city that falls in Revelation.  It is no wonder that we see this city as the site of man's arrogance.   What were they thinking?  Josephus wrote that, "He (Nimrod) also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach."  (Antiquities of the Jews [Book I, Chapter IV])  So the tower was built in defiance of God, as if man could out do Him.  

God seems to get curious as to what we are doing down here though, and comes to check it out, Genesis 11:5.  Don't think that He didn't know what was going on, He is omniscient after all!  Perhaps He was looking for some people who still had reverence for Him, perhaps He wanted to re-establish His presence with these people.  I don't know.  What is interesting to point out is that man's efforts were to reach the heavens, and yet even our combined efforts were so far beneath God that he had to come DOWN to view them.  While I don't know why He chose to come down, I do know that our efforts displeased Him and led to our own disunity.

You see, before this time we were able to work together, we could share our knowledge, God still allowed us to be a part of the whole of humanity.  When once before we walked with Him, He had allowed us to continue walking with each other.  Unfortunately we quit trying to walk with Him and started focusing on ourselves instead.  God recognized that this would lead to a total separation from Him, that it was a path to destruction.  Rather than stand by and let us walk that road easily, He stepped in and "confused" our language.  When we could no longer work together to conspire against Him, we quickly realized that the path we were on was not the one we should be and we abandoned the project, and did what we were supposed to do in the first place, spread out and filled the earth.

This building of a tower was more than just a physical construct, it was a religious one as well.  Man was trying to rise above God, and to do it without God.  Most false religions can be traced back to this one point, this one place.  While not the beginning our our straying from our Creator, this is the first instance where we decide to make a name for ourselves, to consciously proceed without Him.  It is a path that mankind is still on.  

Even today we strive to be known in and of ourselves.  We want to feel as if our efforts will be remembered by mankind, or at least recognized today.  "Look at me!  Look at me!"  we seem to scream, when what we should be saying is "Check Him out!".  You see, while the builders may have been the laborers, the building was impossible without God.  He provided the materials, He provided the knowledge, He provided the strength....He still does today.  When we forget that and begin to think it is our efforts that should be recognized we too will become confused when they fail to bring about the desired results.  In the end, God gets the glory.  Period.  Whether in this life or the next we will all have to recognize that, and give Him what He is due.

Build - 1

Did you know the word "build" appears 237 times in the NIV version of the Bible?  When you throw in the word "built" that number goes up to 423!  Wow!  On top of that 7 different words are translated as build in our Bible.  Looks like there is more to this than a simple case of get moving and make something!

I have decided to study each occurrence of the word "build" in the Bible from beginning to end and see where God takes me with that.  First is Genesis 4:17, "Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then BUILDing a city, and he named it after his son Enoch."

This is the first of our translated "build" words, banah which simply means to build or establish.  Interestingly, this is also the word used in Genesis 2:2 when God made Eve.  

So here we are with Cain, the son of Adam and Eve who half heartedly gave an offering to God and then killed his brother out of jealousy.  After that he attempted to hide it from God, only to be cast out and marked.  He settles in Nod.  Whether Nod was an actual place or just a description of his life is anyone's guess.  Scholars tend to vary on this point and since the flood there really isn't a map with an X marks the spot on it.  Nod simply means, "aimless wandering, to shake, waver, more to and fro, show grief, flutter, lament.  As one person put it, "Nod was a God forsaken region".  In this wandering away from God he settles and become a father to Enoch.  

Enoch means dedicate, begin, instruct, and make wise with the root having connotations of speech (source). So Cain names his son in such a way that we know he is a beginning, and proceeds to build the first city and name it after his son.  This is to be a new beginning, a place of instruction where people can be made wise.  The problem I see is that the instructor (Cain) was a bitter teacher.  Here is a man who knew God, whose parents actually walked and talked with Him, and had been cast out.  It is hypothesized that Cain began a false religion here.  Instructing his descendants on God but in a distorted way.  He kept enough of who God is so that his family recognized Him, but twisted it due to his own feelings of rejection.  He may have regretted killing his brother, but not enough to truly be remorseful as evidenced by his building of a city to train up other according to his views of God rather than return to God himself.  Cain didn't completely give up on God, he did move towards Eden, the home of his parents when they walked with God.  

Enoch was built, but then never mentioned in the Bible again, presumably destroyed in the flood.  It was a city touched by God, but twisted by man's selfishness and pride.  Cain built the city without God and it didn't stand the test of time.  

How many times have we build something in our own lives as a result of our own wandering?  We step back from God because we have created a separation through sin and rather than be honest and face it, ask for forgiveness, and truly repent.  So we begin to perceive God through our own hurt and that distorts our picture of who He is.  Then we begin building - a wall between us and God, a career that consumes us, a life that only marginally reflects who God is.  People around us know that we know God so they look to us as examples.  Only what they see in us isn't the real picture.  None of Cains descendants survived the flood.  The legacy of what he built isn't that of a beginning of something good, but the continuation of a fallen world's spiral.  God wasn't building this....Cain labored in vain.

Build - 2013

There is a growing trend around cyberspace - One Word.  No new year resolutions, no grand schemes to change your life.  Just one word that you build your year around.  One word that shapes you and molds you.  One word that you focus on.

This year God gave me a word.  It's from Psalm 127:1  and it is build.  So this year I am taking a journey through the Bible focusing on that word.  I will share with you here and maybe we can build together, or at least allow God to build in us.